6

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‌CHAPTER 6

16 December 1975 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says she is feeling anxious about leaving.]

Mm mm... just relax and don’t become anxious about it because anxiety disturbs everything. It doesn’t help in any way; it creates only more and more hindrances. If you love and anxiety comes in, it creates a distance and then the relationship becomes a burden. If you meditate and anxiety comes in, then meditation becomes impossible.

Whatsoever you do, do it without anxiety. Anxiety is just a habit. Try to find out why it arises. It is not because of a certain situation; it is just an old habit. If you want to perform something, to show something, if you worry about what others are going to think, then anxiety arises. It is part of the ego, part of self-consciousness. If you are unselfconscious, anxiety is impossible. It is just a shadow.

For example, you go on talking and you talk beautifully. Then suddenly you are on the stage and you have to talk to a thousand people, and then the anxiety arises. You have been talking your whole life, and the same is to be done; you are not going to do anything new! And it has never been a problem. You may have talked to each of these thousand people separately, but why does anxiety suddenly arise?

Now, facing a thousand people, you suddenly feel you are being judged; you feel that they will form an opinion about you – how you act, how you speak, how you perform. Once the idea of performance enters then the natural flow is lost and anxiety arises. So whenever you feel it coming, just seek deep down and you will find it is a self-consciousness – whether it is a relationship, or work on oneself, or anything else.

And there is no need for the anxiety because there is nobody who can judge you; nobody has the authority to judge anybody and you need not depend on anybody’s opinion. In fact this should be

the criterion of inner growth. If you can be happy absolutely alone, and you don’t need. others to make you happy; if you can be flowing, silent, beautiful, alone, and you don’t need others to make you whatsoever you think you are; if others are not needed to prop you, or for any sort of approval, then you are grown-up. Only children ask for others’ approval – what daddy thinks, what mum thinks. When you are grown-up you are on your own; you need not bother what others think.

So drop all anxieties. And they can only be dropped if you accept that you are whatsoever you are. You are not expected to be anybody else and you cannot be. So simply be yourself and relax, and don’t ask for anybody’s approval, anybody’s opinion – and then suddenly there is no anxiety.

And growth takes care of itself. It comes of its own accord; it is not that you have to grow. You have to accept whatsoever you are and the growth follows. Seek it and you will miss. Allow it and it is always there, available. Nothing is needed; you are accepted as you are and God doesn’t ask for any proof. In the very first place He has accepted you, that’s why you are; otherwise you would not have been.

And to look at existence in such a way that you feel at ease and at home is all that religion is about. So you go without anxietyGood.

[A sannyasin asks about the meditation: to me they are all the same. They are all like playing games, but I like them. But the only thing I think is taking me deep is you.]

Right, that too is right. Good. Very few people find all the meditations are good. But if you really understand then all the meditations are the same. They are different doors to the same temple, mm?

And that second understanding is also true; that’s very good. So play and enjoy. Don’t be serious, just take them as fun – the less serious the better. When you are just playing, many more things happen to you.

I have heard about one musician who was very sad and was just sitting by his piano playing idly. Suddenly he struck the chord for which he had been waiting his whole life. It was tremendously beautiful; he was transformed to another world.

Then he tried again and again but the same chord wouldn’t come back, he couldn’t create the same harmony. He tried for months and almost became mad, but he went on missing. Then he dropped all effort, and one day after a few months, once again he was sitting and playing in a not very serious mood – and again it was there!

Then he knew the secret: that that which is beyond comes to you only when you are not trying to grab it, not trying to manipulate it. Because it is so vast it is uncontrollable. It comes only as a surprise.

So play and take everything as fun. The whole point is to delight in it, mm? Then many things happen. It has been good, mm? I am happy!

[Another sannyasin says: You asked me last week to tell you about the meditations. They are all powerful. I have been depressed sometimes, and very happy other times, and it goes on and on.…

]

Meditation stirs many things. It stirs your happiness and your sadness too. Sometimes you are thrown in a valley of darkness – sad and depressed. Sometimes you are raised to the clouds. It is good, allow it, and whatsoever happens accept it.

When you feel depressed, don’t try to escape from it. In fact go as deep in it as possible. Drown yourself in your sadness, become really sad, so that you can touch the very bottom of it. Once you can touch the bottom of sadness, you will suddenly realise that it is the same as the bottom of happiness. The difference is only on the surface; as you go deeper, the differences are lost and the bottom is one.

So next time you are sad, be really sad, drown in it. Don’t make any effort to save yourself: don’t cry, don’t. move from the sadness to something else so you can become occupied and can forget it. No, remain with it. It is difficult, arduous, heavy – but it is worth trying. Once you touch the rock bottom of it, suddenly you are smiling.

Then you can never be sad again, because once you have touched the rock bottom of any feeling, you go beyond it. Very good. You continue.…

[A sannyasin asks about her healing powers: Just about a year ago. I first became aware of it when I put my hands on someone I was giving a massage to, and my hands started vibrating, and the man said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. My hands are vibrating.’ He said it was like an electric current through him. I just wondered what it was about. Then it happened at other times and I found that if I placed my hands over a place that hurt – not on it, just over it – then again the person would feel this current and the pain would go away.]

(Osho shines his torch on her)

You have the capacity, but there are two or three things. Whenever you want to heal somebody, do the humming for at least three minutes. Never do it without it.

(Osho was referring to the humming meditation, the Nadabrahma meditation, where one adopts any sitting position that is comfortable, and with eyes closed begins to hum. You do it loud enough so that people around you can hear it, and so that your whole being is vibrating with the resonance.)

You have the energy, but more subtle vibrations are needed. The more subtle they become, the more helpful – and they will not exhaust you as much as gross vibrations. So three minutes of humming before you do it, mm? So you are almost vibrating all over the body. Cooperate with it; you were not cooperating – the hand was moving on its own, you were not cooperating. Help it to move so that the whole body is vibrating; it is not just a local thing.

And the second thing: if you want to heal a woman, it will be difficult. Your vibrations will be very helpful to a man, but for a woman it will be difficult. So for one year don’t try on a woman, because if you fail a few times then a wrong auto-suggestion goes into your being that nothing is happening and that you don’t have the capacity.

So for one year only try on men, not on women, so that one year will give you such a deep trust in your energy that then you can start working on women. And you will succeed on women too, then. Very good! And I will be helping!...

[A sannyasin said that she felt a Christian with Christians, a pagan with pagans, and a sannyasin with sannyasins.

Osho replied that this could be very good if you were centred, but very dangerous if you were not. He continued, saying:]

If you are centred, wherever you go you are at ease, at home with whomsoever you move. But this is only a possibility if you are centred, if you know who you are, otherwise you will get confused. One day you are a Christian, another you are a Hindu, the next a Mohammedan, and then the whole thing will create confusion.

[She said she felt it was the religious feeling that linked everything together.]

That is what I am saying. If you know what religion is, if you have attained to that link, then it is perfectly good. But I don’t see that link at all. I don’t see that centredness in you at all. I don’t see that this is going to help you.

... The whole thing is not to go on accumulating impressions from everywhere, because all the paths are different. The goal is one, but the paths are different.

So at the end it is perfectly beautiful to say that everything is one, but in the beginning it is very dangerous. And no one can travel on many paths simultaneously. You have to travel on one path only, and you will reach the same goal as others who were travelling on different paths.

So don’t be against anybody – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan – but be for something. Choose something for which you can say,‘I am for it.’ Followers of many paths simply become confused, fragmented. They become a crowd: one hand going to the north, another to the south, one leg to the east, another to the west. They are torn apart.

So what you are saying is good if you have reached. It is good for me, but it is not good for you So we will see. You start meditating.…

[A man said he was studying with a Buddhist, whom he loved very much, in Germany. He asked that if he became a sannyasin would Osho still be with him if he went back to his teacher.]

I will be. I will be working with him also, so don’t be worried.

All buddhist methods are good, tremendously good, and they have nothing to do with religion. They are simply scientific. You need not call them buddhist, you need not call them anything – they are simple methods. Buddhism is not a religion, it is just a psychology. It is not like Christianity, it is not like Hinduism. It is pure science – and pure science belongs to nobody.

So you can continue to work with the man, and soon you may become the bridge for him to come to me! Now close your eyes.…

[A couple, newly arrived in Poona, said that they were finding that their relationship had changed since being here. The girl said she did not feel like love-making so often, her boy-friend said he was feeling attracted to other women.]

(Osho suggested that they make love just once a week, but to have such a total experience that they were completely satisfied.)

When you make love, make it really wild so that it is not just a local release, but your whole being throbs with it. You have to scream and jump so that it becomes a meditation. When you make love, the whole world should know! Then it will satisfy you so completely that for one week you won’t think about it. That mind goes on looking at other women because you are not satisfied.

In the East we have been enquiring into the sexual energy; the West is only enquiring on the periphery. We have come to see that it is not a question of this woman or that; it is a question of female and male energy. If they can meet, really meet, there is such an orgasmic experience that the ego disperses for a few minutes and you are not there. You have disappeared and the whole universe dies with you. Your nature has exploded, all civilization gone. You are wild animals – innocent, vibrant, possessed.

But this is only possible, it can only be a deep orgasmic happening, if you are celibate – then you gather the accumulated energy. It becomes a reservoir and then you explode. Otherwise, if you make love an everyday habit, it becomes just like taking tea or smoking a cigarette – nothing much. Then it is no more than a release, just like a sneeze. So don’t make sex a sneeze, otherwise you will miss the whole mystery of it.

So decide the day that you will make love, and make that day sacred and a day of deep meditation. Once a week – let it be Sunday, the religious day. And let it be a very sacred phenomenon. Prepare that day from the very morning. Be as loving to each other, as careful, as possible; no conflict and no anger – because that distracts the energy.

The whole day you are to feel that the moment is coming when you are to make love. You have waited for six days, and now prayerfully, meditatively, move into it.

Before making love both meditate together. Pray to God to be with you, to envelop you so that you both dissolve into Him.

Let sex be as divine as possible. It is divine because it is the creative force, the creative energy. Nothing is more divine than sex.

So make it so satisfying that soon you will say that one week’s celibacy is not enough, that you need three weeks of celibacy, or four. Because it is so satisfying, the glow, the after-glow, continues for weeks – you are bathed in it. So start it this way, mm?

[A sannyasin said that she had come in contact with a lot of mistrust and fear in the meditations, at the point where she felt that her body was taking over.]

(Osho said that the fear had to be transcended, otherwise she could never go into the meditations, could never grow. He compared it to a seed, saying that whenever the plant starts growing, the seed becomes afraid because it has to die if the plant is to be born. Whenever you come near the death point, where the ego the egg, the shell, has to drop and a new being is coming, the fear will take possession of you. But you have to go on in spite of the fear. He reminded her that he would be with her)

[The sannyasin said she had been leading groups in Germany and did not feel the need to do groups here as Osho had suggested.]

(Osho said that the role of groupleader could be a protection. Adding:)

This has been my experience – I see groupleaders are not grown at all, because when you are leading others you remain outside you are not involved.

You become very wise intellectually, but existentially you don’t grow. If you are led, the groups are totally different. And here they are totally different because you have to work together with meditations, and they help.

If you have been a groupleader, you have to pass through the groups as a must. To be a leader is a very ego-fulfilling phenomenon – and the ego is the problem! By and by almost all of the groupleaders of the world are going to come. They have to, because they have become leaders and they have not grown up; they are like little children. Once you become a leader it is very very difficult to grow, because then your whole prestige is at stake.

I will have to destroy you; only then you can be reborn. I will have to be hard. I will have to be like a hammer on your rock, mm? Good.

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